MEBANE – The guys who make up The Train Group of Mebane are holding a model train show and sale on March 9.

It’ll be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the old Mebane High School gym at 209 W. Jackson St. It’s in the same building as the Mebane Historical Museum. Admission is $5 for adults, but – trust us on this one – that’s a bargain.

Vendors will be selling everything from model trains and track to T-shirts and caps. About 25 vendors have committed to the first-ever such happening in Mebane.

“This is not a fund raiser, this is a good time,” said Kenneth Wilkinson, one of the members of The Train Group. “We’ve got a wide variety of vendors coming.”

The best part of the show may be what’s taking place in the old school’s science room – which is adjacent to the gym. Members of The Train Group will be there running and displaying their model train layout. A better model train display you’ll likely never see.

The display is made up primarily of trains and accessories that were willed to the city by Mebane attorney Tommy Long, who died in 2004. Wilkinson organized The Train Group about four years ago. Its members include Wilkinson and his son, Mike, Angie Bartis, Dick Bell, Cletus Dodson, Giles Mebane, Frank Pearson, Richard Roemer, Walt Washburn and his son, Travis.

The goal of the volunteers was to build a table to hold the track and trains. The layout – still far from finished, that’s true – measures 37 feet long by 17 feet wide. It includes seven tracks, tunnels, mountains, a replica farm, a miniature circus, really spiffy models of old cars and lots more.

When the trains are up and running, they whistle and roar like the big guys did long ago.

The Train Group members meet every Tuesday night to work on the layout. They’re also usually there on Saturday mornings, as well as just about any time members of a church or Scout group want to come take a look.

“It’s just something we enjoy doing,” Wilkinson said.

He said Long donated about 70 sets of trains to the city. Many are one-of-a-kind. Most are Lionel and date to the years between 1945 and 1955. Some have never been opened and almost all came complete with their original boxes – cardboard creations that are in some instances more valuable than the trains they contain.

The entire collection is conservatively valued at several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It’s quite a collection,” Wilkinson admitted.

Bartis, one of The Train Group members, noted the layout is being modeled largely on the way Mebane and the surrounding countryside used to look. U.S. 70 that stretches through town is there as are Fifth, Fourth and Third streets. There’s a model replica of the old Freshwater Grocery, which was for decades a Mebane landmark.

Members of The Train Group have built everything themselves and plan to continue. A scale model of the old White Furniture plant is in the works.

Bartis said the train layout appeals to a wide audience.

“It ain’t the little kids it affects,” he said. “It’s the little kid in me and you.”